Happy New Year! Good Bye Vita, Hello Wii U

I realize it's been a while since my last post. Not much has been going on. I got into Dark Souls, so that has eaten much of my time. My job hunt is still at a standstill, but that will change as of Wednesday.

On to the important thing!

I got rid of my Vita! Some of you may wonder why I did that after that whole ordeal over whether or not I was going to keep it (which I ended up keeping for those of you that didn't read that series of blog posts). Even though I was enjoying Gravity Rush, I just wasn't feeling compelled to keep playing on my Vita. There were a lot of things that just weren't living up to my expectations and Sony, quite honestly, dropped the ball with the Vita. They did promise that the Vita would do a lot more than it does during their E3 presentation of the "NGP" and while some promises were kept, others were only kept provisionally, others, not at all. Don't ask me to list them, just watch the E3 presentation for yourself and compare for yourselves about what they said it would do, and what it actually does. You'll be left disappointed.

So I tried selling my Vita for $350 on craigslist and kijiji, but no honest people ever got in touch with me so, despite the terrible value I got for the whole package ($150 - Vita, 3 games, 16gb memory card + case), I traded my Vita in at EBGames (Canada's name for Gamestop). While I was disappointed with the trade in value, considering that I paid about $400 for everything, since no one wanted to buy it, I took the offer from EB and got a Wii U!

I had been jonesing for a Wii since last summer (for the virtual console and the 2 Zelda Wii games), but since the Wii U's release was just around the corner, I figured I'd wait until this thing came out.

I feel much, MUCH better about investing in a Wii U than I did about the Vita for many reasons. The Virtual Console has a lot of games I played as a kid so I'm excited to be able to play those again (my sisters took the old consoles when they moved out), I love playing my 3DS, so it's not a stretch to say that I would most likely enjoy another Nintendo console, the second screen on the gamepad is a great feature, but most importantly, THERE ARE GAMES ON THE WII/WII U THAT MY GIRLFRIEND CAN PLAY WITHOUT MY HELP! Yep, sounds silly to say that's the most important reason, but my girlfriend isn't a very good gamer. She loves watching me play games, but really can't play many on her own without my help.

Since I bought the Delux package, since it came with Nintendoland, she loves playing that one and it's simple enough that she doesn't need my help to play any of those minigames. I also bought the Wii U Mario which is a bit too challenging for her, but she likes giving me boost blocks while I play with a Wii remote, so it's something we can both enjoy playing together in that way.

I highly recommend a Wii U if anyone is thinking of picking one up. The delux package is obviously better and worth the extra $50 that it costs over the basic set.

I'm planning on picking up Scribblenauts in the future and ZombiU when it comes down in price, but for the most part, I'll be playing virtual console games in the immediate future. One word of warning to those that do plan on picking up a Wii U. You do need a Wii remote to play virtual console games, and you need a classic controller or classic controller pro to play N64 and SNES games (the wii u pro controller won't work). I knew this going in, so I'll be getting a classic controller pro in a day or two.

I was thinking about it but...

I was thinking about doing another 30-day blog series with the Wii U, but honestly, I don't think people would find it as informative as my 30 Day Vita series of posts. Reason being is because I felt no trepadition about buying the Wii U. I knew I would get good use out of it since the entire catalogue of Wii games is compatible with the Wii U. There are a lot of Wii games I wanted to play, but didn't have a Wii. And while I also didn't have a Gamecube, there are gamecube games that I still wish I could have played (Metroid Prime series). Even though the Wii U can't use the Gamecube controller or discs, Nintendo did confirm that a number of Gamecube games will eventually be made available for download through the Wii U's upcomming virtual console. Throw that all together with the Wii's Virtual Console and you have a console that's backwards compatible (even if not through use of actual hardware) with every single home consolet hat Nintendo has launched. Since I don't feel any buyers remorse about getting the Wii U, I think doing another 30 day series would be quite repetative as I'd only be saying "Played XXXXX game on my Wii U today. Still loving this machine". I'd hate to bore people with that and have them completely lose interests in my blogs. I will however have another post related to my experience with the Wii U up in a day or two, so come and check that one out when it's up!